I think they should, it would be an interesting feature Maybe make it only able to see moving units or things that are not defenses so sea mines turrets and walls won't show
Blanket, class-wide abilities like that detract from the potential of single units possessing such features. I'd much prefer this to be handled on a ship-by-ship basis, rather than just handing out abilities like candy to the whole class.
Ships that carry Anti-Sub Weapons should have some form of sonar, but there should be a specific Intel/Sonar ship that does it much better. Mike
TA had the Carriers, support ships which could refuel your aircraft as well as providing significant intel coverage. They also exploded as though they had small nukes in them, they could easily kill anything but the Battleships, and even then those would have a nice sized chunk taken out of them. Heck, if you could get one into position it would have made a really good mobile bomb.
Probably, depending on role. Cruisers should have large radar coverage for air defense, and destroyers need sonar for sub defense, but other ships should only have the bare minimum required for their jobs - no antisub, no sonar, ditto AA/radar. Battleships probably need radar to be combat-effective, especially against each other - although there's no reason to give them radar all the way out to the edge of their range. For flotillas of smaller ships, dedicated intel boats are a great idea, and even in capital formations a little extra radar or sonar coverage is never a bad thing. But you shouldn't have to build a unit for each sensor type, either, or other craziness. TA's carriers were also mobile reactors, which I found more useful than any of their other features - get two repair pads and a fusion reactor all at once? That's a sweet deal.
I agree that it should vary from class to class unless you have some type of super class battleship thats meant to be OP.
I wouldn't mind either a boat with radar capabilities or the ability to build a radar on the water. Either way, gathering intel on the sea is still very micro intensive in the early game as you need to manually scout everything.
The bottleblue should have sonar and an anti-sub weapon, the Narwhal should have radar to go with it's missiles. Submarines should also have sonar. In all these cases the range should be shorter than the structures but longer than the visual range. T2 naval units should not have radar or sonar, requiring them to be escorted by T1 units for intel.
Agreed that not everything should get the ability. Either a support/repair/radar ship (so the enemy can ID and target it), or build it into a lighter support oriented ship like the anti air one.
